I wake up between 5:45 and 6:30am every morning to give me time to prep myself and then head down to the lab. There’s not really much to do in my house as far as chores are concerned, and when I am at the lab, at least I am enabling people to use the computers more, which before I came, was not happening. However there are some things that make waking up in Kenya… special:

Monkeys making other monkeys on my roof

Not knowing if I have electricity or not until I try to make coffee (yes, a coffee machine was one of my splurges after I saw my living arrangement)

The Vervet Monkeys and Baboons fighting turf wars in the morning over the cashew tree in my backyard. A single baboon is more than capable of scaring away an entire troop of monkeys, until the big white monkey, me, starts grunting at the baboon and scares him away. I like the vervets; the baboons are, unsettling

Washing the dishes from the night before, because I have yet to meet a Kenyan who washes the dishes at night, and its a habit I have adopted so that I have something to wake up my motor-control in the morning

Actually being woken up at 5am by the Muslim call to prayer. It echoes its way from Mtongwe all the way through base and up to me on my hill

Actually being woken up at 1am/2am/3am/4am/5am/its-the-christians-time-to-start-shouting-really-loud-and-use-a-stadium-worthy-speaker-system-to-annoy-the-living-beejeebus-out-of-everyone-AM

That’s my list as it stands at the moment. I hope you all enjoyed this glimpse into my “daily life.”

Disclaimer

This blog is an account of active Peace Corps service in Kenya from 2008 to 2011. Please be advised that what I write here are my own opinions and observations, which do not reflect the official views of the Peace Corps. Kenya diggit?

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